Finian Cunningham
28th May, 2021
Syria’s presidential elections this week were a resounding success against a backdrop of 10 years of brutal, relentless war imposed on the Arab country by the United States and its NATO partners.
Archive for the ‘Syria’ Category
Syria’s victory stuns NATO enemies
Posted by seumasach on June 2, 2021
Posted in Syria | Tagged: Assad must stay, Syria | Leave a Comment »
Reporter Sharmine Narwani on the secret history of America’s defeat in Syria
Posted by seumasach on April 30, 2019
“The U.S. was already exiting the Middle East before the so-called “Arab uprisings” kicked off. Whoever in the U.S. national security apparatus made the decision to stick around and redirect these uprisings against regional adversaries made a colossal mistake. I want to write about this one day because it’s important. I believe the Syrian conflict constitutes the main battlefield in a kind of World War III. The world wars were, in essence, great-power wars, after which the global order reshuffled a bit and new global institutions were established.
Look around you now. We have had a reshuffle in the balance of power in recent years, with Russia, China, Iran in ascendance and Europe and North America in decline. That’s not to say that Washington, London or Paris don’t have levers left to pull: They do. But it is on the back of the Syrian conflict that a great-power battle was fought, and in its wake, new international institutions for finance, defense and policymaking have been born or transformed.
I’m not just talking about the strengthening of the BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa], the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Eurasian Union, etc. I mean the world’s networks are shifting hands, too. What will happen to Western-controlled shipping routes now that Asia has started to build faster, cheaper land routes? Will the SWIFT [bank messaging] system survive when an alternative is agreed upon to bypass U.S. sanctions everywhere? There are so many examples of these shifts. It’s not to say that they are due to events in Syria, but rather that Syria triggered the great-power battle that unleashed the potential of this new order much more quickly and efficiently.
Keep in mind that World War III was never going to be like the other two conventionally fought wars…. It was always going to be an irregular war that would escalate on multiple fronts — not just regime change events, but financial pressures, sanctions, propaganda, political subversion activities, destabilization, increased terrorism, proxy fights and so on. The battle for global hegemony really began to unfold over Syria, though, when the Russians, Iranians and Chinese decided to draw a line and put up a fight. The world changed after that.”
Interview with Patrick Lawrence
21st April ,2019
Posted in Syria | Tagged: End of empire, Obama's realist turn, US defeat in Middle East | Leave a Comment »
Entering a major regional re-set – the Syria outcome will haunt those who started this war
Posted by seumasach on January 15, 2019
Alastair Crooke
14th January, 2019
The Middle East is metamorphosing. New fault-lines are emerging, yet Trump’s foreign policy ‘hawks’ still try to stage ‘old movies’ in a new ‘theatre’.
Posted in Multipolar world, Syria | Tagged: Middle East reset | Leave a Comment »
EX-UK diplomat: US lacks power to curb Arab states’ rapproachment with Syria
Posted by seumasach on January 4, 2019
Ford stressed that it’s about time to restore normal relations with Damascus, stating that “we will witness the return of the British and French ambassadors to Damascus possibly next year”.
31st December, 2018
TEHRAN (FNA)- Washington is not powerful enough to block restoration of Arab states’ diplomatic relations with Syria, former Britain’s Ambassador to Syria Peter Ford said as Arab states have rushed to resume ties with Damascus.
Posted in Syria | Tagged: Western defeat in Syria | Leave a Comment »
Trump scores, breaks generals’ 50-year war record
Posted by seumasach on January 1, 2019
Gareth Porter
28th december, 2018
The mainstream media has attacked President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria as impulsive, blindsiding his own national security team. But detailed, published accounts of the policy process over the course of the year tell a very different story. They show that senior national security officials and self-interested institutions have been playing a complicated political game for months aimed at keeping Trump from wavering on our indefinite presence on the ground in Syria.
Posted in Syria, Uncategorized | Tagged: trump v. military, Trump's military entourage | Leave a Comment »
Syrian Kurds throw Americans under the bus
Posted by seumasach on December 28, 2018
M.K.Bhadrakumar
28th December, 2018
The Syrian government forces have entered the northern town of Manbij on the Turkish border earlier today. The Syrian military command announced in Damascus that the operation stemmed from the commitment to “impose sovereignty to each inch of Syrian territories and in response to calls of locals of Manbij city.”
Posted in Syria, Uncategorized | Tagged: defeat of western imperialism in Syria and Iraq, syrian kurds, Victory in Syria! | Leave a Comment »
Trump’s Syrian pullout is a game changer
Posted by seumasach on December 20, 2018
M.K.Bhadrakumar
20th december, 2018
The US President Donald Trump’s announcement on Wednesday regarding the withdrawal of American military from Syria has predictably run into strong headwinds in the Washington Beltway. A formidable coalition appeared overnight – comprising the Deep State, US defence and security establishment, leading members of the Congress, major media organs –branding Trump as a maverick. However, the fact of the matter is that Trump made a considered decision.
Posted in Syria | Tagged: End of empire, endgame inSyria, Victory in Syria! | Leave a Comment »
Prospects for Syrian peace are looking up
Posted by seumasach on November 21, 2018
M.K.Bhadrakumar
20th November, 2018
After prolonged hibernation, the Astana Process on Syrian peace is kinetic, with the troika of ‘guarantor’ states – Russia, Turkey and Iran – set to hold a round of talks in the Kazakh capital on November 28-29. Delegations of Syrian government and the opposition are also expected to attend. A renewed effort is commencing to create traction for the UN-sponsored negotiations in Geneva.
Posted in Global peace process, Syria | Tagged: Astana Process | Leave a Comment »
Washington forces its allies to accept a bipolar world
Posted by seumasach on April 17, 2018
It’s almost as if Trump is following the Leninist dictum of showing the people in practice the outcome is certain policies. As well, as a giving demonstration of the military impotence of the West, it must be added that he has put May, in particular, in a very precarious situation: her political survival now hangs by the most threadbare of lies. Strange that she should have placed her destiny in the hands of the erratic Trump, given the attempts of British intelligence services and media magnates to overthrow him!
Thierry Meyssan
17th April, 2018
By firing missiles on Syria with its French and British allies, the strange President Donald Trump has managed to force the Western powers to accept the end of their unilateral domination of the world. The insignificant result of this demonstration of force drags NATO back to reality. Without having made use of its weapons, Russia now succeeds the Soviet Union in the balance of world power.
Posted in Syria | Tagged: bipolar world | Leave a Comment »
Deconstructing the sacking of Rex Tillerson
Posted by seumasach on April 2, 2018
“We will never know whether Trump actually intended the denouement we have seen, but he has broken the axis between the state department and the Pentagon by introducing Mike Pompey into the equation as his new secretary of state. Pompey is a political associate of the Tea Party movement who can be trusted to ensure that Trump retains the final word on the US foreign policies, especially on Russia.”
Sure enough, Trump does seem to have created some foreign-policy space for himself – he has just announced the withdrawal of US troops from Syria to the horror of the US media.
M.K.Bhadrakumar
15th March, 2018
The surprising part of US President Donald Trump’s move to sack Rex Tillerson as secretary of state is that it took place a full six months after the latter called him a “f***ing moron” at a Pentagon meeting. Tillerson should have thrown in the towel and walked away then. That’s probably what Trump would have preferred.
Posted in Syria | Tagged: End of empire, retreat from empire, trump agenda | Leave a Comment »
Expulsion of Russian diplomats portends troubled times
Posted by seumasach on March 27, 2018
I don’t think the West is uniting: both Trump’s and the EU’s response has been less than fulsome. Trump’s expulsions, along with the appointment of John Bolton of the neocon stable, are surprising given that the Russia collusion narrative has run out of steam and he would then appear to have a free hand to pursue detente with Russia. Is Trump now seesawing between a realist approach and a neocon approach or has some deal been reached between the White House and the neocon opposition? Since we still don’t know for sure what is behind the “Get Trump” campaign, assuming it’s not that he put a hand up a lady’s skirt, then it is equally difficult to surmise as to what such a deal might involve. His sacking of Tillerson just as Boris Johnson was reveling in the latter’s support for Britain after Salisbury strikes me as not being coincidental. Tillerson was allegedly pushing for action against Assad in tandem with the Brits following Nicki Haley’s ominous warning at the UN and Lavrov’s robust counter warning about direct action by Western forces in Syria and attempts to pin more chemical weapons outrages on Assad. Yet nothing has happened. Has the war party just shot it’s bolt and it has turned out to be a damp squib. Have we just missed WW3? Is Trump sitting pretty, graciously appeasing the neocons after seeing off the Brits and their Clintonite allies or has he succumbed to the inevitable and begun preparing a war cabinet as some have claimed. My bet is that in defiance of all appearances the world has just become a safer place and the Western empire has just had it’s Romulus Augustulus moment.
M.K.Bhadrakumar
27th March, 2018
The mass expulsion of Russian diplomats by some countries of the European Union and North America on Monday is an unprecedented and intriguing development. First, the US alone accounts for some two-thirds of the expulsion – 60 diplomats. Curiously, even Britain, which is apparently the aggrieved party in the Skripal affair, expelled less than half that number – 23. Broadly, however, this is an Anglo-American move with which a number of EU countries and Canada display solidarity.
Posted in Syria | Tagged: End of empire, Stripal affair | Leave a Comment »
In These New Times 